Ashes of Heaven (32 page)

“We going to scout together again?” The half-breed flicked his eyes at Miles.

“Looks that way, don't it?” Donegan replied. “Need us a good interpreter along.”

“You damn bet I'm going along, Irishman,” Bruguier declared. “Not going nowhere else till this soldier chief gets that rope off my neck.”

For a moment Donegan gazed at Miles, then said, “I figure the general here to be the sort of man to do just what he says he'll do. If he says we're riding after the last of them hostiles, then we're going. And, when the general's officers go and offer me a drink, I damn well better take 'em up on it!”

The group roared with laughter. Miles snagged Donegan's elbow as the civilian started to turn away. The rest of the group stopped, falling silent as the colonel went stone serious and said, “I wouldn't have put money on you making it back.”

“Didn't take me for a man of me word, General?”

“No, Mr. Donegan. Not that at all. It's just that there's … a lot of open country between here and there. Going and coming. I just want you to know how glad I am that you came back for our spring push.”

He flicked his eyes around at those hardy officers who had tracked and battled the hostile bands all the way from the Missouri River on the north down to the headwaters of the Tongue on the south. “Your outfit has a job to do, General—and for sometime now it seems yours is the only outfit doing a bleeming thing. Damn right I'll throw in with you till we get this Sioux War over and done with.”

“Good to have you riding scout with us,” Adjutant Baird said.

“Where's Kelly? You got him out on some errand, General?” Seamus asked.

“Kelly took himself a leave to go back east,” Miles explained.

That struck him hard. Friends and comrades in arms they were—sharing all the miles, the cold, the terror, sharing the passion of living there on the verge of dying.

“Kelly, gone east,” he repeated as if in disbelief. “Not gonna be back soon enough to go along?”

The colonel wagged his head. “We're preparing to set out on the first of May. Kelly said he wasn't planning to be back before fall.”

“We're pushing off first of May?” Donegan asked. “How soon is that?”

“Less'n a week now!” cheered Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous, clearly anxious to be on the trail.

“How you fixed for scouts?” the Irishman inquired.

Miles laid his hand on the tall man's shoulder and turned the civilian to the left. “There, you see those Cheyenne just coming out of my office? And there's some Sioux among 'em too.”

“They your prisoners?” he asked, his brow knitting.

“They're your scouts, Mr. Donegan.”

“M-my
scouts?”

“You did ride all this way from Laramie to sign up to scout for me again, didn't you?”

“Yes, General—”

“Then I've just made sure you're going to have the best trackers in this country, Irishman. If we intend to find the most stalwart of the holdouts, then I want you to have the best eyes and ears in the territory. Warriors who know every ridge, every hillock and coulee, every tree, and creek, and bush.”

“Haven't you ever worked with Indian scouts before, Mr. Donegan?” asked Captain Cusick.

“Lots of times,” he explained. “But they was never Injuns I just been fighting me own self. Not no bucks I done battle with.”

Miles cleared his throat. “You have misgivings, Mr. Donegan?”

Seamus turned and regarded the colonel a moment before answering, “No more misgivings than the next man what's been fighting these warrior bands since the summer of sixty-six.”
*

“Are you or are you not volunteering to ride with my scouts, Irishman?” Miles pressed on.

“Long as we can make sign—me and them—we'll be able to talk,” he said, a dull edge of reluctance flattening his voice. “Just like I give you my word: I come here from Laramie to do what I could to find the last warrior bands still out there, General.”

The colonel said, “My outfit needs men like you to help us finish the job others started. I want to know if you're in.”

“I'll ride for you, General,” he declared. “I need the work.”

“And I need
you
because I want to trust these warriors, Mr. Donegan,” Miles said as if sharing a confidence. “I'm going to need someone to tell me if I can trust them.”

At long last, Seamus smiled hugely and said, “And you figured me for that someone, eh?”

Miles pounded him on the back as the entire group set off for the low-roofed cabin that served as a cramped mess hall. “Now, shall we go drink to our new civilian liaison of scouts, gentlemen?”

Chapter 26

Spring Moon
1877

BY TELEGRAPH

The War in Europe Underway Already.

More Indian Murders Reported in Wyoming.

Wyoming.

An Indian Attack and Murder.

CAMP BROWN, April 26.—Barney Hall, a prospector, has just arrived here badly wounded by Indians. He and two others were attacked near Bad Water on the 16th, and after a sharp fight the Indians killed his two partners. Three others from the same party have not been heard from.

Box Elder turned his face toward the emerging sun, feeling its newborn power. Although his rheumy, matted, watering old eyes could not see, he knew the sun was rising.

He had been waiting for it.

Sitting here that dawn, he listened as the temperature of the air subtly changed, hearing those first whispers of the earth as it warmed, feeling across his skin the talk of the wingeds, the crawls-on-their-bellies, every fragrant perfume of re-awakening life, the fertile conversations of the individual blades of grass, each tiny leaf budding on the chokecherry. Box Elder paid attention to all that his senses told him. For most of his life, this stooped and wrinkled old man had been blind, yet, he could nonetheless see things other men with normal vision failed to see.

For the moment he was alone, brought to this hilltop in the darkness by his new apprentice. Lame Dog, son of Spotted Wolf, had already left, returning to the small camp their group had made upon reaching Beaver Creek three days ago.

“Do you see that ridge east of our lodges?” he had asked Lame Dog the evening before.

“How did you—”

“If you don't know the answer to your own question, then I am failing to teach you all I can teach you,” he said, his face crinkling with a smile. “The top of that hill, take me to it after the moon has set tonight.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes,” Box Elder had explained. “Then you can return to our shelter and go back to sleep.”

Lame Dog had awakened him as the moon sank out of sight. After wetting the bushes nearby, Box Elder held out his arm and it was seized by his young apprentice who led the blind man slowly through the brush, loose rock, and patches of old snow, then up the sharp slope to the top of the ridge.

“Do you need anything more?”

“Only for you to leave me alone now,” Box Elder had instructed. “Come for me when the sun is two hands off the earth.”

“I will return for you in the morning.”

Box Elder listened while the sound of the young man's moccasins faded down the rocky slope. Then he was alone with the last of the night, the vestiges of this inky darkness, the final gasp of that coldest time of the day. Alone with the expectation to feel, to hear, to know.

By the time the sun had risen off the earth and was finally climbing into that spring sky, Box Elder did know.

It was time for them to turn north.

When the
Ohmeseheso
first broke apart on Rotten Grass Creek, this wizened, blind prophet had elected to stay with the Sweet Medicine Chief, Little Wolf, and the Sacred Hat Priest, Coal Bear. Better was it for the Northern People to concentrate as much of their power within one village.

Then the peace delegates returned from their first visit with the Bear Coat at the fort on the Elk River. Box Elder grew troubled, less sure of his decision to follow the others south. He had never visited one of the
ve-ho-e
reservations. Over time he had grown uncertain that the land chosen for the Lakota Little Star People was truly the place the
Ohmeseheso
should live.

“I will take those lodges that follow me west to the Rose-berry River,” he had explained to Little Wolf, Morning Star, and Coal Bear many days ago when he knew he must set his own path. “I don't know yet where I am to go, but I am certain it is not to the White River Agency. I will wait for sign to come to me, then I will put my feet on that path.”

On that terrible day when the multitude set off for the south behind their great chiefs, when Crazy Head and Old Wolf led their smaller group north for the Buffalo Tongue River, Box Elder turned his face west. As he held
Nimhoyoh,
the Sacred Wheel Lance, high over his head in those first, faltering steps, he was joined by Spotted Wolf, a great war chief, and Elk River, a noted horse catcher, along with their families. Days later when they reached the upper waters of Beaver Creek, the old man instructed the others to have the women make camp.

“For how long, Box Elder?” Spotted Wolf had asked.

“I don't know,” he admitted. “It might be days. I only know that after all our traveling alone, it is here I will be given a sign.”

For three mornings they had stayed there beside Beaver Creek as afternoon tempests raged over them, soaking the lodgeskins and those poor canvas shelters where the families huddled cold and wet until the raging spring storms had passed. Now, on this fourth morning, he knew.

“Is that you, Lame Dog?”

The young one huffed to a stop at the top of the ridge, “Who did you expect, old man?”

“Come, come get me,” he directed as he stood on unsteady legs. “Take me down off this hill. I have much to tell the others.”

When Box Elder and the young apprentice neared the camp, Lame Dog began to holler like a camp crier. “Gather yourselves! Drop what you are doing! Our prophet has important news!”

He heard their moccasins, heard their murmurings, felt them pressing close as Lame Dog brought him to a halt. Sensing the sun's warmth full on his face, Box Elder explained what he had come to know.

“I am going in to the Bear Coat's fort. Those of you who do not want to go with me are free to follow your hearts. You can join Little Wolf's village on their journey south. Or you can follow your hearts and wander—there are Lakota still wandering, staying out, refusing to go to their agency. Spotted Wolf or Elk River may lead you—”

“I am going with you, Grandfather,” Spotted Wolf interrupted, addressing the old man with that term of deepest respect.

Elk River instantly agreed, “Where you go, Box Elder, my family will follow.”

How his tired old heart leaped in his chest, as if on the broad wings of a blue heron catching wind beneath it. “I have been shown this will not be an easy thing we are going to do.”

Spotted Wolf said with a gulp, “The easy times are in the past.”

“Yes,” he told them quietly. “I am certain we have many dark days yet to come, my children. Many, many dark days yet to come.”

Despite the unknown, they had followed him. Despite all that he warned them of, the chiefs and their warriors followed with their families. There were no easy places to go anymore. There was nowhere safe for their women and children and elders. Their lives had changed and Box Elder told them they would have to find some way to accommodate that change.

Walking beneath
Nimhoyoh
across all those miles, he remembered those first
ve-ho-e
who came to the
Ohmeseheso
generations before, when he had been but a little one himself. The hairy faces who came, and went again. Those few did not stay in the land of the Lakota and the
Ohmeseheso,
but merely moved through it. Yet ever since the fight of the Hundred in the Hand near the Pine Woods Fort
*
the
ve-ho-e
had come to stay.

Box Elder knew the finest days of his people were in their past.

All he could strive to do now was to assure that his people survived. If they were not rich in ponies and lodges, weapons and plunder, winter robes and quillwork, then the
Ohmeseheso
must survive into the next generation. And the next. And hopefully the next.

Of all the roads Box Elder had walked, even that climb out of the Valley of the Red Fork when Three Fingers Kenzie crushed the Shahiyela and they stumbled into the unknown winter wilderness, this was the hardest.

Day by day he walked on foot with those at the front of the march, just behind Spotted Wolf and Elk River on their ponies. Their young men rode watch on either flank, ranging ahead so they would not be surprised when they finally struck the Buffalo Tongue. For two days now they had journeyed north along its west bank, sensing they must be getting close. Now they had stopped for midday, with the spring sun high, while two of the young men scouted far ahead, probing for some sign of the soldiers and their fort.

Over these last two days Box Elder could tell that Elk River had grown even more anxious. He was not quite himself anymore. The holy man called the chief to sit with him as they rested.

“Elk River, I think you have grown unsure that you made the right decision to follow my medicine.”

When he finally answered, the war chief said, “Yes, it is true what you say. My heart grows heavy to give the
ve-ho-e
all our horses, to give up all our weapons as the Bear Coat demands of us when we surrender.”

“The war is over,” Box Elder reminded him. “Our days of fighting the white man are done, but I cannot leave this north country. I cannot leave this land. I cannot leave the bones and burial ground of my ancestors.”

“A man should not leave his ancestors,” Spotted Wolf said.